This invention relates to apparatus used in the preparation of wiring harnesses; and in particular, it relates to a wire spool holding and positioning apparatus for maintaining the wire spools in a location easily accessible by personnel making up the wire harnesses.
In the manufacture of aircraft, ships and other large pieces of equipment it is usually necessary to use extensive electrical wiring in order to operate all systems of the equipment. Typically, the wires are bundled together to form wire harnesses prior to the final assembly of the equipment. In that portion of the manufacturing plant in which the wire harnesses are prepared, it is necessary to store various sizes and types of wires on spools adjacent the area of wire harness preparation in order to provide the personnel making the wire harnesses easy and frequent access to the wire spools. Prior art wire spool holding apparatus has comprised a stationary wire spool tree including a plate bolted to the floor and having a vertical post mounted to the plate. Four horizontally-oriented rods are mounted on the vertical post in even vertical distribution. The wire spools are then placed on the rods usually two spools per rod. The tree assembly is placed near the location where the wire harnesses are being prepared. Usually two or three of these wire spool trees are placed in series to provide ample storage room for a number of different wire sizes and types. A disadvantage of the prior art systems is that the spools are at varying levels above the floor. In order to make it easy for the personnel preparing the wire harnesses to reach wires on various levels, it is necessary to run all of the wires from the various spools through a common access point, usually at about waist level, at which the wire harness preparer can pick them up.
If a common access point system is used it means that the wires from the lower level spools will have a steep angle to climb before reaching the access point and any wires coming from upper level wire spools will have to travel along a steep angle downwardly to the common access point. Oftentimes a machine is utilized to cut and mark the wires being prepared for the individual wire harnesses. In such a situation, the wires would be pulled from the cable spools by the cutting and marking machine. If the wires coming to the cutting and marking machines are from spools which are placed so that the angle of the wire as it is fed into the cutting machine is great a vertical force is applied to the pulling apparatus thereby exerting an abnormal wear factor on the bearings associated with the pulling device which bearings are set up to accommodate only horizontal motion and not vertical motion.
In addition to the disadvantage of angularity in reaching the common pickup point, the use of a common pick up point also means that the several wires will be brought together at a single point creating a possibility of confusion on the part of a worker attempting to take hold of a particular wire. Also the possibility exists that wires from different spools will become entangled, thereby making the harness fabricating operation less efficient since time has to be taken to untangle any such wires.
A further problem associated with the standard stationary wire spool tree arrangement is in the loading of new wire spools onto such tree. The typical wire spool, when it is filled with wire, weighs in the neighborhood of forty pounds. Therefore, the upper level wire spools will require someone with sufficient strength to lift a forty-pound spool to the height of the rod upon which the spool must be placed in the wire tree. Only those spools which are in the second row from the bottom are at a convenient level for placement of spools on the tree.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an apparatus for holding and positioning wire spools so that they are easily accessible to personnel preparing wire harnesses.
It is a further object of this invention to provide such a holding and positioning apparatus which can hold a plurality of cable spools simultaneously and position them selectively to provide the wires to personnel at a level substantially even with the input to a wire cutting and marking machine.
It is a another object of this invention to provide an apparatus for holding wire spools onto which the spools can be loaded without the necessity of lifting the wire spools to heights above waist level.
It is an additional object of this invention to provide such a wire spool handling apparatus which takes up a minimum amount of floor space in the manufacturing facilities.